Jason Mccool’s Reviews > Creeds, Confessions, and Catechisms: A Reader's Edition > Status Update

Just finished the Heidelberg Catechism and started the Westminster Larger Catechism. Good stuff!

Going through the Heidelberg Catechism now. Beautiful document, although there have been a few questions where the answer was a little lacking in scriptural support. Question 44 on why the Apostle's Creed added "He descended into hell" was exemplary of the answer not really answering the question & the referenced scriptures supporting the unrelated answer about suffering instead of the question about hell.

Just finished the 2nd London Baptist Confession of 1689 & starting on the catechisms now with the Heidelberg Catechism up first. I'm really enjoying reading these. More Protestants, particularly non-denominational congregants, should read these classic doctrinal statements and Q&A's (catechisms). I think there'd be a lot less people calling themselves Christian when they don't accept basic Christian doctrine.

Through with the Westminster Confession of Faith and into the 2nd London Baptist Confession of 1689 now. WCF is generally well-written and biblically grounded, but they went oddly off the rails with their paedobaptist belief (i.e., infant "baptism", or rather sprinkling) with no good verses to back that up. Good example of eisegesis. The London Confession at least corrects that.

I think more Christians should read the creedal statements of our faith. I think there's a lot of people who consider themselves Christians who would probably reject much Christian doctrine in their current condition if they read it, being really heretics without even knowing it. Know what you believe and why you believe it. And always ground it in the Bible.

Of course, all of these individual texts are all readily available online for free, but there's something about a physical book, particularly a classy one like this, that invites reading. Each text also has a nice intro at the beginning that's been helpful for me with ones from other traditions that I wasn't part of. Really nice to have so many creedal statements collected in one volume to compare.